Bug Report: Incorrect quoted-printable encoding

[Francois Grieu]

This is to report a bug with how Entourage 9.0.4 (4011)
for traditional MacOS performs quoted-printable encoding.

When sending an HTML-enabled message consisting of
- blank line
- 50 times the character =
- blank line

the message is mime-formatted and the HTML part is encoded
with the "quoted-printable" mechanism; the message contains
a line with

=3D[repeated 50 times]<BR>

The total length of this line is 154 characters, when rfc 2045
<http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc2045.html>
clearly defines that a quoted-printable line must not exceed
76 characters.

" (5) (Soft Line Breaks) The Quoted-Printable encoding
REQUIRES that encoded lines be no more than 76
characters long. If longer lines are to be encoded
with the Quoted-Printable encoding, "soft" line breaks
must be used. An equal sign as the last character on a
encoded line indicates such a non-significant ("soft")
line break in the encoded text.
(..)
The 76 character limit does not count the trailing CRLF,
but counts all other characters, including any equal signs."


The same bug occurs in the non-HTML part of messages containing
characters specific to ISO-8859-1, such as 50 times é


So clearly, Entourage violates quoted-printable encoding rules.
Problem is it applies an about 76 character limit BEFORE,
rather then AFTER, quoted-printable encoding. This triggers
problems in some gateways.


Note: this encoding bug is in addition of two bugs reported
long ago in the quoted-printable DECODING of Entourage and
Outlook for traditional MacOS 9:

- the decoding process removes a space or tab when it is the
last byte of a 65536 bytes block in the (encoded) file. This
bug is demonstrated in an example at
<http://persoweb.francenet.fr/~fgrieu/QuotedPrintableBug.sit>

- the decoding process translates an end-of-line in the message
(one without a final = character) into 0x0D (CR), instead of
0x0D 0x0A (CR LF) as required explicitly by rfc 2045.

Both bugs tend to break received attachments that are encoded
using quoted-printable, like PDF files.


I'd be interested to know if either of the three bugs is fixed
in the X version of Entourage.

I'd be interested to know the best method to report such bugs.


François Grieu

 

[Andreas Prilop]

I'd be interested to know if either of the three bugs is fixed
in the X version of Entourage.

LOL! Do you know how many RFCs Outlook Express for MS Windows is
violating for years? Nothing gets fixed in Outlook Express -
"there are no bugs, only features".

I'd be interested to know the best method to report such bugs.

Report to Microsoft? You must be joking!

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Thanks for reporting this, François. I'll pass it on to MacBU.

You should report it yourself here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp

(In Entourage X you can get there easily via the Help menu, but you cab
still report 2001 bugs there too. If they haven't been fixed yet and still
apply in X, they'll be accepted.)

I'm afraid the =3D -more than 76 characters bug is still in Entourage X.I
haven't checked the others yet.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - 2001 or X.
It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.

From: Francois Grieu <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 17:38:27 +0100
Subject: Bug Report: Incorrect quoted-printable encoding

This is to report a bug with how Entourage 9.0.4 (4011)
for traditional MacOS performs quoted-printable encoding.

When sending an HTML-enabled message consisting of
- blank line
- 50 times the character =
- blank line

the message is mime-formatted and the HTML part is encoded
with the "quoted-printable" mechanism; the message contains
a line with

=3D[repeated 50 times]<BR>

The total length of this line is 154 characters, when rfc 2045
<http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc2045.html>
clearly defines that a quoted-printable line must not exceed
76 characters.

" (5) (Soft Line Breaks) The Quoted-Printable encoding
REQUIRES that encoded lines be no more than 76
characters long. If longer lines are to be encoded
with the Quoted-Printable encoding, "soft" line breaks
must be used. An equal sign as the last character on a
encoded line indicates such a non-significant ("soft")
line break in the encoded text.
(..)
The 76 character limit does not count the trailing CRLF,
but counts all other characters, including any equal signs."


The same bug occurs in the non-HTML part of messages containing
characters specific to ISO-8859-1, such as 50 times é


So clearly, Entourage violates quoted-printable encoding rules.
Problem is it applies an about 76 character limit BEFORE,
rather then AFTER, quoted-printable encoding. This triggers
problems in some gateways.


Note: this encoding bug is in addition of two bugs reported
long ago in the quoted-printable DECODING of Entourage and
Outlook for traditional MacOS 9:

- the decoding process removes a space or tab when it is the
last byte of a 65536 bytes block in the (encoded) file. This
bug is demonstrated in an example at
<http://persoweb.francenet.fr/~fgrieu/QuotedPrintableBug.sit>

- the decoding process translates an end-of-line in the message
(one without a final = character) into 0x0D (CR), instead of
0x0D 0x0A (CR LF) as required explicitly by rfc 2045.

Both bugs tend to break received attachments that are encoded
using quoted-printable, like PDF files.


I'd be interested to know if either of the three bugs is fixed
in the X version of Entourage.

I'd be interested to know the best method to report such bugs.


François Grieu

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

LOL! Do you know how many RFCs Outlook Express for MS Windows is
violating for years? Nothing gets fixed in Outlook Express -
"there are no bugs, only features".

That has nothing to do with Entourage. The Mac Business Unit has been quite
religious about following correct internet protocols in Entourage. Name
another RFC Entourage breaks, if you can. They will be glad to receive this
report, which I have forwarded to them, and you can expect to see it fixed
in a later version. It's getting awfully close to the next major release, so
it may be too late for that one - I don't know.
See previous message.

Report to Microsoft? You must be joking!

What kind of nonsense is this? It looks like Andreas Prilop is a troll. Pay
no attention to him. Once upon a time he confined himself to valid
complaints about inaccurate transmission of Greek and other non-Latin
scripts in MS Word Mac. It looks as if MS has paid some attention to that:

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg21576.html

So maybe reports have paid off.

What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

I think it's called "Andreas Prilop".

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - 2001 or X.
It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.